Tragic Details About Jane Fonda That You Never Knew

This article includes discussion of sensitive topics, including sexual assault, child abuse, physical abuse, sexual coercion, rape, and disordered eating.

Movie star Jane Fonda has survived an enormous amount of trauma in her 80-plus years on the planet. Somehow, she's thrived — becoming an acclaimed actress, a successful businesswoman, and a much-discussed activist. But after years of struggles, her scars are now badges of honor. Though she's gotten much guff for trying to express her truth, at the end of the day she's managed to own her story. She's been exploited sexually and emotionally, survived the slings and arrows of cultural mocking, and managed to make her way through fires that would roast another person alive.

Over the years, Fonda has experienced all sorts of abuse — self-abuse and hurtful actions directed at her. Here are just some of the negative things she's gone through, and how she managed to survive to become the impressive, accomplished woman she is today. 

Jane Fonda announced during a 2017 interview with The Edit (as quoted by the BBC) that she had been sexually molested as a child.

"To show you the extent to which a patriarchy takes a toll on females — I've been raped, I've been sexually abused as a child and I've been fired because I wouldn't sleep with my boss and I always thought it was my fault; that I didn't do or say the right thing. I know young girls who've been raped and didn't even know it was rape. They think, 'It must have been because I said no the wrong way,'" she said at the time.

Additionally, in her autobiography, "My Life So Far," Fonda revealed that her actor, father Henry Fonda, was often emotionally and physically distant from her, and that his random bouts of anger and emotional abuse left her desperate to please him. She tried to project a level of perfection that no human being could possibly maintain. She became so reluctant to admit that she might be hurt or sick to her family that when she broke her arm playing as a child, she concealed her pain until her father — furious that she had refused to wash her hands before dinner– seized her and forced her limb under the tap. The pain became so great that she passed out, to his horror. They would go on to have a difficult, strained relationship that lasted until Henry Fonda's death.

Jane Fonda's mother, Frances Fonda, suffered from mental illness and was sexually abused herself. Frances was entered into several mental hospitals during her lifetime, and during her final stay she died by suicide in 1950, when Jane was 12.

Frances' depression was partially driven by Henry's ongoing affair with a younger woman named Susan, who would become Jane's first stepmother; he asked Frances for a divorce three and a half months before her death. It was a huge scandal in the press, something that Jane was oblivious to until one day she was handed a movie magazine and became all too conscious of what had occurred. 

"A year after my mother died, I was in study hall and a girlfriend passed me a movie magazine, in which it said that my mother had cut her throat," she revealed in "My Life So Far" (as quoted by The Huffington Post). Jane Fonda blamed herself for her mother's death, believing that her refusal to visit Frances during her last institutionalization resulted in Frances' passing. She remained deeply traumatized by this loss for decades, until she obtained a copy of her mother's medical records and learned of the sexual abuse she suffered, which prompted healing in the younger Fonda.

Trauma manifests in each person in a completely different way. In Jane Fonda's case, it resulted in an eating disorder which plagued her for decades. She confessed that she developed bulimia somewhere in her teenage years, and it was driven by her own lack of self-esteem thanks to her father's parenting choices. 

"I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly. He was a good man, and I was mad for him, but he sent messages to me that fathers should not send: Unless you look perfect, you're not going to be loved," she explained in a Harper's Bazaar interview. 

Eventually, something had to give. "It was in my 40s, and if you suffer from bulimia, the older you get, the worse it gets. It takes longer to recover from a bout. I had a career, I was winning awards, I was supporting nonprofits, I had a family." She decided to quit. Her quest to find something new to focus her attention on led her to become an exercise maven, making her a fitness guru.

The ironic thing about Jane Fonda's acting career is that it only occurred because she experienced sexual harassment at her first nine-to-five job. Convinced she had no real talent as a thespian, she tried to work as a model, then became a stenographer, an endeavor which ended poorly. "I got fired as a secretary because I wouldn't sleep with my boss. I didn't know what else I could do, and I became friends with Susan Strasberg, daughter of the famous acting coach, Lee Strasberg," she told People Magazine. 

Another factor in Fonda's future fame was Susan's support. "She told me that I should try to do an interview with him and maybe he would accept me into his class. And I did, and he did. And then he told me I had talent. Nobody had ever said that to me, so that kind of did it." Since she had previously been convinced she had no talent, the vote of confidence from Strasberg was huge for the young actress. 

A few years later she would be the toast of the Swinging '60s, but her confidence and ease with the increasingly frank material was largely an illusion.

With films like "Barbarella" — one of the best guilty pleasure sci fi movies of all time for which Jane Fonda filmed a nude scene that had to be reshot –  the actor was launched into the limelight as a public personality all her own. Fonda would have to grapple with her positioning as an arthouse sex kitten for decades, a persona engineered by her first husband, French director Roger Vadim. While they shared a daughter, Vanessa, and made several memorable films together, Fonda felt as if her entire life and image was manipulated by Vadim — and later confessed that he coerced her into having group sexual encounters that she didn't want to participate in.

In "My Life So Far," Fonda spoke about the couple's open marriage — and how she bent her true desires and personality to please Vadim, entering into threesomes, other sorts of multi-person entanglements, and affairs in which she didn't want but which titillated him. She said she was bullied by Vadim into some of these encounters, and into finding other women who would participate in them. He even employed an escort service for one such evening. "It seems shocking that I did that, but I managed to convince myself that it was fine, that I wanted to, even though it was killing my heart," she said in "My Life So Far" (via The Standard).

Jane Fonda is a longtime campaigner for a number of causes — including women's rights — though she admitted she was a latecomer to the cause, focusing more on climate change-related movements and anti-war activities. She has protested for these issues and been arrested numerous times while doing so. She even turned down the role of Chris MacNeil in "The Exorcist" due to her Vietnam War activism. And yet her activism has often come with a huge price resulting from some self-admittedly naïve decisions she made along the way, causing her actions to frequently be misunderstood or mistrusted by the press.

Infamously, she has long been reviled by serviceman as "Hanoi Jane" for her visit to North Vietnam during its war with the United States in 1972. Terrible rumors about her inaction while seeing prisoners of war being held captive by the army there sprouted from that visit; they have colored public perception of her even since. The actress details what drove her to make the trip and her numerous regrets over it in a statement posted to her official website. One infamous moment which ended up used as propaganda bothered her in particular. "There is one thing that happened while in North Vietnam that I will regret to my dying day — I allowed myself to be photographed on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun," she acknowledged.

Jane Fonda admits that she had difficulties parenting her children, but her relationship with eldest daughter Vanessa Vadim initially left Fonda worrying that she hadn't been the best mother to her. Fonda experienced exhaustion and depression when Vanessa was born, and her darkening mood was laden with tears, in spite of the seemingly idyllic surroundings.

"I just felt that I had failed — that nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to, not the birth, not the nursing, not my feelings for my child or (it seemed to me) hers for me," she wrote in "My Life So Far" (per Vanity Fair). Fonda later realized she had postpartum depression, but the end result was that she didn't manage to bond with her daughter. 

Fonda admitted that she wished she'd been a better mother to Vadim and hoped out loud that she'd forgive her some day in the documentary "Jane Fonda in Five Acts." Vadim has grown up to become a documentarian and an activist, and since 2020, the two have grown closer. Vadim attended rallies and was arrested beside her mother, which proved to be quite the bonding exercise for them. After confirming to The Times that their estrangement had ended, Fonda said about their mutual avocation, "It was something that we could share. It was something we could do together and she's very good when we find ourselves in a corner. When I came out of jail I didn't know she was going to be there and we just looked at each other and burst into tears."

Three months after divorcing Roger Vadim on good terms in 1973, Jane Fonda married activist Tom Hayden and had a son, Troy Garity, with him. But that union went sour too, and she and Hayden divorced in 1980. 

In the wake of that divorce, Fonda told Death, Sex and Money that she experienced a breakdown. "I didn't even realize it at the time, it was only looking back on it — well I guess I did. It wasn't even that it was that good a marriage, but sometimes a divorce or a crisis can pull the scab off a very very very early wound. And that's what this did to me. I couldn't speak above a whisper. I couldn't eat. I could only walk very very slowly. It was all the cliches. Heavy heart, my heart weighed 20 pounds."

And yet she still looked back on her marriage to Hayden fondly and they, too, ended things on good terms. What help snapped her out of the spiral was finding love again — this time with mogul Ted Turner. She retired from acting for a period, but returned to the big screen in the wake of their divorce in 2001.

One thing Jane Fonda had difficulty with during her life was trying to raise her brood of children. Besides Vanessa Vadim and Troy Garity, Fonda also adopted Mary Luana Williams when she was a teenager. But caring for her kids proved difficult for the actor, mostly because she had no parental role models upon which to model her skills.

"I was not the kind of mother that I wish I had been to my children," she told CNN. "I have great, great children. Talented, smart. And I just didn't know how to do it. I have an organization in Georgia that deals with adolescents, and I've studied parenting. I know what it's supposed to be now, I didn't know then. So I'm trying to show up now."

Years later, it's clear that she's got a solid relationship with all three of her kids and is present in the lives of her grandchildren, proving that she's true to her word.

Sadly, living a long life means surviving the people you love. Two of Jane Fonda's ex-husbands have predeceased her; only Ted Turner is still alive as of this writing. Roger Vadim died on February 12, 2000 at the age of 72 in Paris. He was suffering from cancer at the time. Tom Hayden died at the age of 76 on October 24, 2016.

Fonda was closely involved in the memorial for Hayden; she worked his widow and their son Troy Garity to create a tribute to her ex. "In the course of preparing the memorial, I reread many of his books and speeches, watched films, news footage and interviews of Tom that Troy and Barbara assembled and read letters that friends and colleagues of his were sending in about the impact Tom had on their lives. And I was able to see with even more clarity than when he and I were together what an extraordinary life of dedication he lived and what a lasting impact he had on countless lives," she wrote on her official website.

Jane Fonda also survived her younger brother Peter Fonda, who starred in "Easy Rider," one of the best directing debuts for an actor of all time, and was the father of actress Bridget Fonda. He died at 79 in August 2019 due to respiratory failure from lung cancer. 

She was naturally devastated by the loss; the two of them had often appeared together in public to bolster the shared Fonda acting legacy. "I am very sad. He was my sweet-hearted baby brother. The talker of the family. I have had beautiful alone time with him these last days. He went out laughing," she said in a statement published by multiple outlets (as quoted by Deadline). 

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

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If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who does, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org